Republican lawmakers greeted with cautious openness the announcement that President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will meet, reminding the president of years of failed talks with Pyongyang and urging him not to ease economic pressure just yet.
Trump on Thursday accepted an invitation from Kim to meet by the end of May, after South Korea’s national security adviser Chung Eui-yong briefed the president on the South’s own meeting with Kim that occurred earlier in the week. In that meeting, Chung told Trump, Kim said he was “committed to denuclearization,” agreed to refrain from any further weapons tests, and recognized that routine joint military exercises “must continue.”
Some GOP members attributed the apparent diplomatic shift to the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign, which has included several rounds of biting sanctions. But they urged Trump not to lessen the pressure on Pyongyang despite the talks, something the administration has already repeatedly vowed not to do.
“We can pursue more diplomacy as we keep applying pressure ounce by ounce,” said House Foreign Affairs committee chairman Ed Royce. “Remember, North Korean regimes have repeatedly used talks and empty promises to extract concessions and buy time. North Korea uses this to advance its nuclear and missile programs. We’ve got to break this cycle.”
“As the administration begins to work through the important details of such a meeting, we must continue to apply to maximum pressure to the regime in Pyongyang,” said Senate Foreign Relations chairman Bob Corker. “Skepticism and caution are critical as these discussions continue.”
Colorado senator Cory Gardner, chairman of the foreign Relations Committee’s East Asia subcommittee, said the president must demand that Kim take “concrete steps toward total denuclearization.”
The price of admission for a meeting between @POTUS and Kim Jong Un must be the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. 1/3
— Cory Gardner (@SenCoryGardner) March 9, 2018
He and others have stressed that discussions with the Hermit Kingdom must have the “explicit aim” of denuclearization.
Administration officials have varied on the rigidity of preconditions necessary for talks with North Korea, but have generally said that Pyongyang must take meaningful steps toward denuclearization, whether that is curbing its weapons programs or stopping weapons tests. The Kim regime had previously said its weapons programs were non-negotiable.
In February, Vice President Mike Pence said that the U.S. is willing to talk with the North—but that the maximum pressure campaign would not let up. “The maximum pressure campaign is going to continue and intensify,” he said. “But if you want to talk, we’ll talk.”
Gardner and a group of Republican senators wrote to Trump Thursday ahead of the surprise announcement and urged him to continue sanctions and joint military exercises alongside any potential talks with Pyongyang, until “such time that there is complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement” of North Korea’s weapons programs.
“Mr. President, when it comes to the North Korean regime, we must verify before we trust,” wrote Gardner, along with senators Jim Risch, Marco Rubio, Jim Inhofe, Ron Johnson, and Todd Young. “While we must take any credible opportunity to talk with Pyongyang about denuclearization, we must also never forget that the DPRK continues to represent a grave threat to the United States, our allies, and global peace and stability.”
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham on Thursday night said the president’s “strong stand” against Pyongyang represents the “best hope in decades” to resolve the nuclear threat peacefully. And he had some advice for Kim, too.
“A word of warning to North Korean president Kim Jong Un—the worst possible thing you can do is meet with President Trump in person and try to play him,” he said. “If you do that, it will be the end of you—and your regime.”
An administration official described the president’s decision to go ahead with talks as a break from past policy. For one, the official said, the administration will maintain sanctions and maximum pressure amid talks.
“If we look at the history of these negotiations that took place under prior administrations, they have often led to the relinquishing of pressure. They have often led to concessions being made to North Korea in return for talks,” the official said.
In addition, immediately holding high-level talks has not been the norm. Such talks have previously been thought of as the result of much low-level finagling. But the official said that years of experience “going back to 1992” have evidenced the failure of direct low-level talks.
“President Trump made his reputation on making deals. Kim Jong-un is the one person who is able to make decisions under their authoritarian—uniquely authoritarian—or totalitarian system,” the official said. “And so it made sense to accept an invitation to meet with the one person who can actually make decisions instead of repeating the sort of long slog of the past.”
